A "Pink" is also the name given to a red coat worn while hunting on horseback, as in fox hunting. It's so called, not because of its color, but because they were once almost exclusively made by a tailor named Mr. Pink, whose establishment is still extant in London.

The wildly popular R&B/pop singer Alecia Moore (better known to the television-watching world as Pink (or P!nk depending on the source)) was born in Doylestown, Pennsylvania on September 8, 1979, to James and Judy Moore. Her parents divorced when she was still a toddler, and they alternated custody of young Alecia and her older brother Jason. The family is Irish-American/Jewish.

Pink is perhaps better described as an antithesis to her current audience and her music press-dictated contemporaries; a badass pseudopunk rocker that would just as soon record a cover of The Misfits' "Mommy, Can I Go Out And Kill Tonight" (not that she has... yet) as record a pop ballad. This musical asset, however, is largely lost on most mainstream music critics and totally ignored by most of Pink's audience. Much to her chagrin, she occupies a niche among fans of Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys and their ilk; the pre- to early-teenage suburban girls of America and wherever else such creatures can be found. Her fame was so widespread among that audience that her record company has, so far, thought it prudent to mix utterances of the word "fuck" out of all songs that contain it on the first two albums she released. The result sounds like she's saying "fffk," but it's still plainly obvious that she's really saying "fuck." I hope her label comes to its senses soon and releases her audience doesn't consist entirely of preteen girls whose mothers would blanch if they heard someone saying "fuck" on one of their daughter's CDs.

Of course, that didn't stop her from dropping all kinds of f-bombs on future tracks, most notably 2010's "Fuckin' Perfect", which is a wonderful song.

Pink has worked extensively with Linda Perry, formerly of 4 Non Blondes. When she tours, Linda comes along, playing guitar and backing Pink's vocals on stage. Linda has become somewhat of a musical mentor for Pink. When they first met, the song "Eventually" was completed less than an hour later. Linda is also responsible for bringing her protégé to a wider audience, namely the 30-something lesbian crowd that makes up Linda's primary fanbase. Pink fandom among the lesbian community is a rapidly growing phenomenon, and Pink is totally cool with it. Perry, coincidentally, bought Pink her first lap dance at a (female) strip club while they were working on M!ssundaztood.

Pink enlisted the help of Rancid guitarist Tim Armstrong for the recording of her third full-length album, entitled Try This. Of late, she has been working with Shellback.

There have been a lot of rumours lately that Pink is a lesbian, but they are so far just rumours -- no confirmation either way from Pink herself or her PR people. I like her a lot as it is, but if she does eventually out herself (if she is indeed a lesbian), she'd be so cool you could keep a side of beef in her for a month. It would seem that Pink is in fact bisexual, after all. She was apparently spotted recently getting frisky with actress Kristanna Loken, who played the T-X in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, at various nightclubs.

Miss Moore (if you're nasty) married (male) motocross racer Carey Hart on January 7, 2006, after a six-month engagement and five years of dating. After almost exactly two years of marriage, she and Carey separated, but they got back together and renewed their wedding vows in 2009. A daughter was born in mid-2011. Sorry, ladies.

Pink starts out with the ironically titled "Farewell". The opening song is slow and quiet, and seems to provide a glimpse of the rest of the album: a gentle, coasting journey through bright lights and soft breezes. What follows instead is forty minutes of psychedelic rock, and as good as that raunchy rock sound is, Pink is at its best during its diversions. The tracks "Farewell", "My Machine", "Blackout", and "Just Abondoned My-self" are all good examples of what Boris is capable of creating in a rock setting. For the most part, Pink is loud and fairly harsh compared to current mainstream rock music, but it is one of Boris' most radio-friendly albums, along with Soundtrack to Film: Mabuta No Ura, or Rainbow (one of their collaborations with practically-fourth-band-member Michio Kurihara).

The title track (a staple for Boris concerts) is something like what a Japanese Motörhead might sound like, especially if you focus on the dirty crunch of that distorted riffing. Wata keeps her guitar tuned low so the top strings nearly sound like a bass guitar, and as a result the actual bass is fairly hard to hear. It doesn't matter at all though. The bass isn't needed to fill in any space; there isn't any empty space to fill between Atsuo's maniacal drumming, Takeshi's hoarse Japanese yelling, frenzied guitar solos by Wata, and a liberal helping of feedback to cover it all. Speaking of which, I can sum up the track "Nothing Special" with three words: "amplifier labour pains". One wonders how many amps Boris goes through just to record an album, because the one used to record "Nothing Special" could not have lasted long.

"Blackout" is one of my favourite tracks on this album, but hey, I like noise. By definition, there cannot be a "sound" of sensory deprivation, but this song comes close to approximating the experience. It's probably a good idea to skip the LSD for this one. It starts out loud and grumbling, builds almost instantly, and then drops like a curtain of dark matter. It's absolutely bleak, and it sucks the energy out of you, making you wonder what happened to all the good ol' rock that you had just been enjoying. And then it ends, colour returns to the world, and "Electric" answers your question with a rapid instrumental defibrillation.

Classifying any new music is a nightmare these days with all the pseudo-genres people keep coming up with, as if every band gets their own. Unfortunately, Pink is far from the "strictly rock" album seems to present itself as, and calling it rock seems like shortchanging it. Farewell and the last two tracks (My Machine and the intentionally-misspelled monster that is Just Abondoned My-self) are better described as post-rock. Blackout is doom metal with a good dash of noise. I'm not sure what Afterburner is, but it's foggy, lazy, and even the riffs sound stoned. Some people would be inclined to call that stoner rock, a label that I'm pretty comfortable with applying to a number of Pink songs.

Even when Boris is trying to be straightforward they can't help but mix in a few other interesting things along the way, and that's ultimately why Pink struck a chord in people. Pink is the perfect album to start with, a fact that most fans of the band probably found out firsthand. It's not too weird, not too painful, and it hints at many other directions that the trio have either explored already, or plan to eventually. If nothing in the album appeals to you, I wouldn't bother trying other albums. Think of it as Boris 101.

Chromatically, the color pink is light red, made by diluting the color red with white. It has historically been seen as a strong color1, presumably because it stands out strongly against the common palettes found in nature and in our everyday lives. Currently in America and in much of much of Europe the color pink is associated strongly with femininity, and particularly with young, prepubescence girls. This has currently reached the point where you rarely see pink except in conjunction with girls, or during the few holidays that have collected pink as a traditional color; Valentines' day and Easter.

"The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl."Ladies' Home Journal, June 1918

Until the 1940s2 the fashion world flip-flopped on who should wear pink; boys, girls, blonds, blue-eyed babies, etc. Individual stores and magazines set their own standards, which were followed or not, as the consumer wished. In the 1940s pink swung back to the girlish end of the spectrum, and this time it stuck. This is probably in large part due to retailers realizing that the stronger the associations between color and sex, the more likely that parents would buy an entirely new wardrobe for a new baby. And it worked; we rarely dress our boys in their older sister's clothes. (You will notice that diapers, blankets, and even cribs and strollers are color-coded now.) In the 1960s and 70s we had a feminist backlash against the color pink for girls, which resulted in decreased sale of pink baby clothes; the Sears, Roebuck catalog did not carry any pink toddler clothes for two years in the 70s. Obviously this did not stick, but the brouhaha over baby colors helped solidify the tradition of 'pink is for girls, blue is for boys'.

Pink's other claim to fame is that it is, along with red, the color of romance, and particularly of Valentine's Day. This is probably because roses have long been associated with love and romance3 since at least the time of the ancient Greeks. Roses were associated with the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite, and later the corresponding Roman goddess of Venus. Of course, the same is true of the myrtle, apple, and poppy plants, all of which have very nice flowers. Roses probably won out because they are comparatively easy to grow, long lasting, look good in bouquets, and of course, because they accent the crimson heart so nicely. Even so, pink is most commonly used for children's valentines, which traditionally means that either the giver or the receiver will be a young girl.

Pink is closely tied to roses; in most European languages (including both the Germanic languages and the Romance languages) the word for the color pink is some variant the Latin word rosa, meaning rose. English is different because we name the color after a different flower, the pink, a member of the Dianthus family (related to the carnations). The flower, in turn, was most likely named from the verb 'to pink'4, meaning 'to pierce', or 'to make holes in', which is appropriate for a flower with such ragged edges. This probably also comes to us from Latin, by way of pungere meaning to 'to pierce' or 'to prick'. The only other English word from the verb 'to pink' is 'pinking shears'.

It is worth noting that the Komen Foundation has made pink the trademark color for their fight against breast cancer. They started using the Pink Ribbon as a symbol for breast cancer awareness, and now run such programs such as Wear It Pink and Race for The Cure. They are also starting to get propitiatory about the color pink, and have been asking other charities not to use the color pink in their advertising. As the Komen Foundation has already sued to prevent other charities from using the phrase 'for the cure', this has caused some concern. In Canada the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation claims legal ownership of the pink ribbon as an official trademark, although they have not claimed any specific shade of pink as their own. These organizations, along with National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in the US, has created an additional set of associations with the color pink, reaffirming the feminine associations, but lessening the child-centered focus.

Footnotes:

1. Not only in Europe, but also in Japan, where the color pink was traditionally associated with strength and masculinity. It was (and is) strongly associated with the transient cherry blossoms; the blooming of the cherry trees in the spring represents (among other things) the samurai who is willing to nobly sacrifice his life for his master. As Western culture pushes hot pink for girls around the world, the associations that go with many shades of pink are changing, and the English word has entered the Japanese language as 'Pinku'.

2. More traditionally, both boys and girls were dressed in white, unadorned, easily-bleached dresses. It wasn't until the 1900s that things got fancier, and babies started wearing colors.

4. Some sources claim that the origin might be from the Dutch flower known as the pinken, but the English flower pink was documented in use more than 100 years before the first known appearance of pinken. (1681 vs. ~1570).

A name given to several plants of the caryophyllaceous genus Dianthus, and to their flowers, which are sometimes very fragrant and often double in cultivated varieties. The species are mostly perennial herbs, with opposite linear leaves, and handsome five-petaled flowers with a tubular calyx.

2.

A color resulting from the combination of a pure vivid red with more or less white; -- so called from the common color of the flower.

Dryden.

3.

Anything supremely excellent; the embodiment or perfection of something.

Pink eyeMed., a popular name for an epidemic variety of ophthalmia, associated with early and marked redness of the eyeball. -- Pink saltChem. & Dyeing, the double chlorides of (stannic) tin and ammonium, formerly much used as a mordant for madder and cochineal. -- Pink saucer, a small saucer, the inner surface of which is covered with a pink pigment.